


Which Dreamed It

by mrs_d



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: (as in "seriously wtf are you doing mrsd?"), (obvs. this is me we're talking about.), Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Dimension Travel, Dubious Science, Established SamSteve, Multi, POV Multiple, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-10-30 03:30:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10868151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_d/pseuds/mrs_d
Summary: Other Sam looks over, and his mouth falls open.“Whoa,” he breathes. “You’re... me?”“Maybe,” Sam manages. It’s hard to speak with those familiar eyes so focused on him. “Are you Sam Wilson?”Other Sam puffs out a breath in something that’s almost a laugh. “No. I just play him on TV.”





	1. Sam

**Author's Note:**

> I started this in November as a what-if cracky idea... and, welp.
> 
> If you want to, you can find me on [Tumblr](http://mrsdawnaway.tumblr.com).

“Watch it, watch it, it’s sparking,” Dr. Cho warns, her voice getting more agitated with each word.

Sam turns to his left and sees Steve’s grip tighten on his shield. Their eyes meet briefly, one of those moments of instant, unspoken communication between them, and Sam edges closer. On Steve’s other side, Agent May does the same, so the three of them form a solid wall between Dr. Cho and the alien artifact, which is giving off some kind of glowing blue mist before them.  

“Will it explode?” May demands.

“I’m not sure,” Dr. Cho replies distractedly. An alarm starts sounding, but she kills it almost immediately with a solid smack to the console. “This might just be—”

Whatever she’s about to say gets lost as the mist crackles with white electricity, multiple forks of it flashing fast, so bright that Sam has to squeeze his eyes shut. There’s a blast of ice-cold wind and a sudden rush of sound in Sam’s ears that reminds him of sand storms on the desert — and then a weirdly familiar yell, cut short by a soft thud.

Sam opens his eyes. He can’t see much — the mist is thicker, and still snapping with ominous pinpoints of light — but there’s someone lying facedown on the floor in front of him who wasn’t there a moment before. Someone with Sam’s skin tone and a white t-shirt stretched across broad shoulders.

“Sam,” Steve says. It’s almost a question.

Sam turns automatically, but Steve isn’t looking at him. He’s started moving forward, inch by inch, towards the cloud of mystical energy and the man inside it.

“Cap, stay back,” May warns him. “Might be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” the man in the mist repeats, huffing like he’s attempting a laugh. “You’re the one with a gun, lady.”

“And I know how to use it,” May snaps. “Get up. Slowly. Hands where I can see them.”

“All right, all right, I know the drill,” the man says, spreading his hands out to his sides and slowly working himself up into a sitting position. “You wanna see my ID, too, officer? Because I’m not sure I want to be reaching for my wallet just now, if you know what I mean.”

The man’s face is hidden by another wave of shimmery smoke, but that voice.... Sam squints and takes a step closer, his eye catching the glint of gold on the man’s left ring finger.

“Sam,” Steve says again.

The man stands up, his head clearing the smoke, and Sam goes abruptly cold. “Holy hell,” he murmurs, because he’s looking at himself.

The man doesn’t seem to see or hear him. He only has eyes for Steve, and it’s uncanny how the grin that takes over his face is the exact same, right down to the gap in his teeth that Sam was self-conscious about when he was a kid.

“Chris!” the man exclaims. “Damn, am I glad to see you. What the hell just happened?”

“I’m not sure. Who’s Chris?” Steve asks, but Other Sam is still talking.

“One minute I’m in my hotel room, waiting for dinner, and next thing I know, boom! Thought I got struck by lightning till I opened my eyes. Where are we, and what’s with the get-up? Why’d you shave? Is there a photo shoot nobody told me about?”

“Sam,” Steve says, and, maybe the third time really is the charm, because Other Sam looks over, and his mouth falls open.

“Whoa,” he breathes. “You’re... me?”

“Maybe,” Sam manages. It’s hard to speak with those familiar eyes so focused on him. “Are you Sam Wilson?”

Other Sam puffs out a breath in something that’s almost a laugh. “No. I just play him on TV.”

* * *

“So, let me get this straight,” Steve says, a long time later. “In your world, we’re fictional characters?”

“Right.”

“And you’re Anthony, the actor who plays Sam?”

“Right again.”

“And the man who plays me—”

“Chris.”

“—has a beard?”

Sam blinks. Is that seriously what Steve’s asking?

“Usually,” Anthony replies. It looks like he’s fighting off another bout of laughter. “Why, you can’t grow one?”

“I— I’ve never tried,” Steve admits. “Does it look good on him?”

“Okay,” Sam interrupts, when Anthony opens his mouth again. “I think we’re getting a little off-track here, right, Dr. Cho?”

Dr. Cho doesn’t look up from the instrument she’s using to sweep Not-Sam for radiation. “Well, I must admit I’m a bit curious about what that would look like.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “May? Back me up?”

May is frowning, her eyes narrowed at their guest. “Is it a blonde beard?”

“Oh my god,” Sam groans.

Anthony laughs out loud. “Man, I know you’re a big-time Avenger now, Sam, but you need to lighten up. You gotta admit this is funny.”

“More like crazy,” Sam mutters.

“At least we can agree on that,” says Anthony, still chuckling. “So, this kinda thing happens a lot around here? Life of a superhero and all?”

“Something like that,” Dr. Cho replies, putting aside her radiation gadget and returning to the computer console. “It may be some time before we can get you back home, Anthony. Will anyone be looking for you?”

“Nah,” replies Anthony. Sam can’t believe how he’s taking all this in stride — he doesn’t think he’d be as calm if something like this happened to him. “Everybody knows I’m laying low tonight. Don’t have to be anywhere till tomorrow. Though Sea Bass might come knocking, I don’t know.”

“Sea Bass?” Steve echoes faintly.

“Sebastian,” Anthony clarifies, with a smile that’s almost blinding. “He’s the guy who plays Bucky. Speaking of,” he adds, craning his neck to look around the room, “I don’t see him, is he around?”

“Uh,” says May, looking to Steve, who nods his permission. “He’s with Natasha.”

Anthony’s eyes widen, and then he shakes his head, looking disappointed. “Dammit, Sam. If anybody should be marrying Black Widow, it should be you.”

Sam’s eyebrows shoot up. In fact, they just about fly up off his face. Beside him, Steve’s mouth falls open, and May makes a sound halfway between a cough and snort.

“What?” says Anthony.

“Should we tell him?” asks Dr. Cho worriedly.

May turns her back on them — she is definitely laughing now — and Steve gives Sam a look that he can read as clearly as if he’d spoken: _Up to you, babe._ Sam takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“Anthony,” he begins, choosing to look at the wedding ring on the other man’s finger instead of the mirror of his face. “I’m gay.”

There’s a beat of silence. Sam wonders whether or not he should add the other part — about Steve — but he decides that Anthony’s probably had enough shocks for one night.

“Gay,” Anthony repeats, his tone unreadable.

“Seems like something you should have known already,” May puts in, still sounding supremely amused.

Anthony ignores her. His expression has shifted to pensive now, serious for the first time all night. “Huh. Like, really gay?”

“Is there another kind?” Sam asks, unable to keep from sounding snarky — this conversation is bringing up some serious flashbacks of coming out to his brother.

Steve notices, his posture stiffening beside Sam like they’re prepping for an attack. “You got a problem with that?”

“No, I—” Anthony stammers. His eyes dart down to Steve’s tight shoulders, and he actually takes  a step back. “Look, I’m an actor, okay? There’s a lot of guys — and girls — they hook up, they mess around, and it doesn’t always mean—”

“Trust me, it means,” Sam interrupts, taking mercy on him. He touches the small of Steve’s back, feels him relax. “At least for me it did.”

A quick knock on the door has them all turning before Anthony can reply, and a second later Scott wanders in, his eyes glued to the phone in his hand.

“Hey, guys, was there an EMP or something? Because I was just about to take a picture of Sassy Fran when my phone cra— whoa,” he exclaims, when he glances up and sees who’s in the room with them. “When did we get two Sams?”

“It’s complicated,” May answers.

“Obviously,” says Scott. “Anything I can help with?”

“Maybe,” replies Dr. Cho. “Come over here and check out these electromagnetic readings.”

Scott steps up to the console, and, while the two of them get to work, Anthony looks over at Sam and Steve. He seems a little dazed.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks.

“Nothing,” says Anthony, shaking his head. “Or— well, everything. I’m just not used to seeing him without a beard, either.”

“Who’s got a beard now?” Scott calls over.

“Oh my god,” Sam says again.

* * *

He leaves Anthony in the dining room showing pictures on his phone to Steve and the others — _Wow, he dyes his hair, too?_ — and heads back to the lab to find Dr. Cho for an update on when their guest will be leaving. Not that he minds Anthony— much. He seems like an okay guy once you get past the fact that he never seems to take anything seriously. And that he never stops talking.

Sam takes the long way around, looking for some peace and quiet, and notices all the lights on in the security room. He pokes his head in the door and sees Natasha, uncharacteristically rumpled in grey sweatpants and a baggy black t-shirt, checking the feed for every camera, one after another.

He knocks on the open door before stepping through. She glances over her shoulder and gives him a distracted smile that worries him more than it puts him at ease. Here is a woman who can stay calm through any operation, any interrogation, and she can’t muster up a convincing smile for him? Something is really, really wrong. 

“Nat, what is it?”

“Hey, Sam,” she says. Her voice has a distinct waver. “You haven’t seen James, have you?”

Sam shakes his head. “No. Why?”

“I can’t find him,” Nat replies shortly, starting to flip through the feeds again like she’s channel-surfing.

“You can’t— what?”

“I woke up and he was gone,” Natasha explains. “Which, in and of itself, isn’t that weird.”

Sam nods. He’s shared enough close quarters with Bucky to know that sometimes he needs to walk off the dreams. Hell, Sam has to do that, too, more times than he can count.

“But I checked the places he always goes, and he’s not there,” Nat goes on. She’s clicking through the feeds faster now, her fingers heavy on the keys. “He’s not anywhere.”

“Okay,” says Sam, trying to stay calm while the worst case scenarios — which are pretty fucking bad when it comes to Bucky — flicker through his mind, along with a half a dozen possible strategies. “Okay, before we panic, I’ll go back up to the dining room. Pretty much everybody’s there, I’ll ask around.”

“Good idea,” Nat replies distractedly. As Sam is about to leave, she adds, like she’s talking to herself, “Maybe it had something to do with the storm.”

Sam stops. “Storm?”

“Yeah,” says Natasha, straightening. “It woke me up— sort of. Big flash of lightning, long roll of thunder.” She frowns at the look that is no doubt spreading across Sam’s face. “What is it?”

“Nat,” Sam begins, as a chill runs down his spine. “There wasn’t any storm. But I think I know where Bucky is.”


	2. Sebastian

Sebastian is pacing his hotel room, tapping the back of his phone against his thigh in an impatient, uneven rhythm. It makes the music piping out of the speaker waver strangely, but that’s okay. Small price to pay for something to do with his hands that isn’t smoking.

Because he quit. He did. Cold turkey, couple years ago now. Doing it for a role, and taking a few drags from a friend’s cigarette when he’s partying — those don’t count.

“Dammit, Mackie,” he mutters, when his phone buzzes and it isn’t a reply. It’s an email from his publicist, something that he feels totally justified in ignoring for the moment. “Why won’t you text me back?”

Sebastian knows the answer; Mackie’s tired. He said so at quitting time, when Chris made noises about going out as a group, Team Cap and all that. Seb had shrugged — not committing, but not not committing, either — but after a quick bite of dinner alone in his hotel room, it started to seem like a better and better idea.

 _Anything to spend some more time with Mackie,_ a tiny voice in Sebastian’s head reminded him. He suppressed it ruthlessly.

 _I’m in,_ he sent to Chris, right before sending Mackie an invite as well.

Chris replied immediately — sending back a giant smiley — but there was nothing from Mackie.

That was three songs ago. Now, as the fourth song fades into the fifth, Seb pauses in front of the mirror and runs his fingers through his hair one more time. It looks good today — damn good, if he can say so himself, which Mackie already did once today. Another reason to go out on the town tonight.

“All right,” he tells his reflection. “Fuck it, it’s his loss.”

He starts tapping out a quick message to Chris — _Mackie’s not coming. Meet you in five?_ — as he heads to the closet to decide on a jacket, but a bright flash of light and loud sizzling sound startle him. His phone hits the floor with a clatter, and his music cuts out, but Seb barely notices. He’s a little distracted by what seems to be a goddamned portal opening in his hotel room.

The cloud of blue smoke that appeared out of nowhere crackles with white streaks of energy, and a rush of cold air roars in Seb’s face, forcing his eyes closed. There’s a small thud and a familiar mechanical sound that Seb can’t place, and when the wind subsides, he opens his eyes to find a man charging out of the mist, heading straight for him.

“Hey, whoa,” he tries to say, when he recognizes the man, but he’s pinned to the wall in seconds flat. Seb can see all the resemblances up close: the grey-blue eyes that he’s seen in the mirror all his life; the cleft in his chin; the long, stringy hair and bulked-out shoulders; the dark stubble and bright teeth — so straight and white, not like they were before Marvel hired him.

None of this knowledge helps him deal with the icy blade at his throat, though, or the metal arm — minus its red CGI tracking stickers — that’s holding his right wrist so tightly that his fingers are starting to tingle.

“Who the hell are you?” the man growls. “Why do you look like me?”

Sebastian blinks with the abrupt realization of who he’s face-to-face with. It isn’t— it can’t be possible, and yet...

“My name is Sebastian,” he says, calmly and clearly, careful not to move any part of his body other than his lips. “We’re in Los Angeles. I’m not armed.”

The Winter Soldier’s eyes dart down, tracing the lines of Seb’s body like he doesn’t believe him. Or maybe he just wants to be sure; Seb can’t blame him for that. He stays as still as he can, praying that he passes inspection.

Eventually, Winter’s grip on Sebastian’s wrist slackens — the metal arm calibrates with a whir, which, Seb realizes, was the strangely familiar sound he’d heard a moment ago. The knife moves a fraction of an inch away from his skin, too, and Winter shifts back enough that Sebastian can draw in a breath.

“How did I get here?” asks the Winter Soldier.

“That’s an excellent question,” Sebastian replies, “to which I don’t have the answer. What’s the last thing you remember?”

He only realizes, when Winter frowns, that that’s probably a pretty insensitive question to ask. But the soldier pulls back completely, and doesn’t kill him, so Seb calls that a win.

“I was in bed,” Winter says slowly. He flips his knife with the easy grace that took Sebastian months to learn, and tucks it into the waistband of his—

“Oh,” says Sebastian, feeling his face heat up as he realizes that Winter is only wearing boxers, and from the gap in the fly— well, Seb has never seen himself from quite this angle before.

“Eyes up here, pal,” Winter says, and Seb jerks his head up in surprise to see a familiar lop-sided smirk. Combined with the hair, the stubble, and the damn metal arm, it’s incongruous but contagious; Seb chuckles with embarrassment.

“Sorry,” he says. “You were saying?”

Winter’s smile fades as quickly as it appeared. “I was in bed,” he says again. “And there was a noise, a light. I went for my weapons, but this was all I could get before the whole world went sideways.”

Sebastian nods. “Keep that under your pillow, huh?” he asks softly, and Winter’s eyes narrow.

“How do you know that?” he asks, giving Seb a look that’s downright calculating. Sebastian suppresses a shiver.

“I know you pretty well, I think,” he begins hesitantly. “You better sit down, it’s kind of a long story.”

* * *

Winter takes the news well, all things considered. But then again, Sebastian reminds himself, watching him sniff cautiously at a cup of water before taking a sip, Winter comes from a world where incredible events are the norm. Seb has read some of those comic books, and... yeah. Interdimensional travel is just the tip of the iceberg.

Not that this means it isn’t cool for Sebastian. He’s always kind of wondered if such a thing could be possible, ever since he started reading science fiction — and science fact — when he was a kid, hoping to be an astronaut.

Plus, no actor could ask for deeper insight into their character.

“You’re staring at me again,” Winter mutters, and Seb realizes that he was zoning out.

“Right. Sorry,” Seb says, shaking himself out of it. “Bad habit.”

Winter nods solemnly. “Speaking of, you got any smokes?”

“I don’t, actually,” Sebastian sighs. “Gave it up.”

He gets a wry grin in response. “Now, why would you wanna go and do a thing like that?”

“Well, we can’t all be healthy forever like you,” Seb shoots back, but Winter’s facial expression shifts again — so quickly that Sebastian wishes he had some old dailies to watch, to see if his face was capable of that kind of rapid change, too.

“I ain’t exactly healthy, kid,” Winter drawls, and Seb smiles, a little sadly, at the way his vocal tone has changed as well. This is the tired asset talking, not the young soldier who teased him a second ago.

“You want me to go get you some?” Sebastian asks. “You could come with, check out LA.”

Winter’s shaking his head before Sebastian’s finished his sentence. “Thanks, but no. I’ll live without them,” he declares. “Wouldn’t mind some pants, though.”

“Yeah,” Seb replies, jumping up off the bed. “I should have something here that’ll fit you.”

They have to try two or three pairs of jeans before they find one that fits — a little snug in the thighs, but it works. Seb gives him his favorite hoodie, too — it’s stretched out and faded because he’s had it for years, and it comes almost everywhere with him.

“Not bad,” he starts to say, as Winter pulls up the zipper, but a knock on the door interrupts him.

Seb turns in that direction, just for a second, and when he turns back, Winter is _gone._ “Uh,” he says, hoping desperately that the guy didn’t just escape off the twelfth-storey balcony. “Okay.”

He crosses the room and peers through the peephole, finds Chris — of course, who else would it be? — sticking his tongue out.

“Naturally,” Seb mutters, but he’s grinning, too. He turns around again. “This is Chris,” he announces to the seemingly empty room. “He’s safe.”

He waits one beat, two, and then shrugs and opens the door.

“Sebby,” Chris greets him, drawing the second syllable out like he’s a frat boy at a football game. “You ready to go or what? You stopped answering my texts.”

“Oh,” Sebastian replies, surprised. He looks over his shoulder, sees his phone is still on the floor, its screen dark. “Uh, sorry. Technical difficulties,” he explains. “Come in for a second, There’s something— uh, someone, um—” He gives up and shakes his head. “Just come in for a second.”

Chris steps over the threshold. His eyebrows shoot up when Sebastian puts the chain in place.

“Are you okay?” he asks, looking worried and serious where he had been eager and happy before.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Seb replies quickly. “Uh, there’s just—” He fumbles again, at a loss as to how he’s going to explain the unexplainable thing that just happened. “You see—”

“He’s doing it for me,” a gravelly voice interrupts, making Chris jump.

Somehow, Winter has reappeared, leaning against the wall like he’d never left. There’s an awkward moment of silence before Chris clears his throat.

“Sebby?” he says again. “Why is there a cosplayer in your room?”

“A what?” says Winter. He’s fingering his knife again, casually threatening with his metal fingers on display.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Chris overrides him, sticking out a hand. Seb recognizes his _dealing-with-the-public_ voice. “You are...?”

“My name is Bucky,” Winter replies, his mouth twisting wryly again.

Chris’s smile turns plastic as he looks to Sebastian. “Okay,” he says. “I’m gonna... go, and, um, you two— ah, have fun. Okay?”

“Chris,” says Sebastian in horror, as he realizes what Chris must be thinking. He catches Chris by the arm when he turns. “It’s not— _God,_ no, it’s not that. It’s—”

“Interdimensional portal,” Winter interjects, saving him. “Don’t know what caused it, but it was probably that alien thing that Steve decided to bring home. I told him not to do it — that idiot never did listen to a word I said.”

Chris blinks.

“Trust me, pal, this is weird for me, too,” Winter reassures him.

It takes Seb a while to explain what he thinks happened — or, what Winter thinks happened, really, since he has much more experience with this than Sebastian does — and at the end of the explanation, Chris just sits there, gaping at them both.

“Either this is the most elaborate prank I’ve ever heard of,” he says at last, “or...”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. “Yeah,” Seb agrees quietly. “Yeah.”

“Maybe I’ll go get some smokes after all,” Winter says into the silence. “They got Lucky Strikes in your world?”

Which is how Sebastian ends up buying his first pack in over two years. Chris is twitchy beside him, anxious about getting seen and photographed — “Kids can’t see me with cigarettes, I’m pretty sure that’s in my contract somewhere...” — and Winter trails them, blending into the scenery of the street and the back aisle of the bodega.

Still, being recognized in public comes with the territory of being an actor. There’s a small cluster of teenagers on the sidewalk waiting for the light to change, and one of them glances over their shoulder, does a double take, and nudges the others. Seb suppresses a sigh and brings up a smile, but the teenager who noticed them blows past him, right up to Winter, who — Seb realizes far too late — isn’t disguised with the hat and sunglasses combo that he and Chris are wearing.

“Oh no,” he hears Chris whisper.

“Hey, wow, I’m a huge fan,” one of the teens says, sticking out a hand that Winter doesn’t shake.

“Is he wearing the arm? He’s wearing the arm,” another whispers.

“Oh my god, he is,” her friend agrees. The two of them are holding hands so tightly that their fingers are white. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my—”

Seb’s mind races, hopping from one possible solution to another so fast — _Pretend to be your own brother! Take away Winter’s knife so you don’t get charged with homicide!_ — that he’s dizzy. But Chris has it covered, he’s taken his glasses off and laughs when the teens recognize him, too. He slings an arm around Winter’s shoulders, invading the guy’s space way more than is probably safe, and positioning the two of them between Sebastian and the fans.

“Hey there, nice to meet you all,” Chris says, and it sounds like he’s grinning. “You out on the town tonight?”

At the fans’ shy replies, Chris offers some selfies, while Seb tries to tuck himself further into his jacket and turns away, praying that no one looks too closely at him in the background.

“Autographs?” he hears Chris say, and his voice isn’t quite so confident now. “Uh...”

“Sure,” Winter breaks in. “But I’ll need to borrow a pen.”

“You don’t even know my last name,” Sebastian reminds him out of the corner of his mouth, and Winter mutters something in Russian. Seb doesn’t quite catch the meaning, but he can tell it’s snarky.

Within minutes, Chris is waving at the fans as they leave with their scraps of paper and a spring in their step. The second they’re out of sight, though, his smile drops away, and the anxious expression comes back with a vengeance.

“Well, that was a hell of a thing,” he comments.

“I think we dodged a bullet there,” Sebastian agrees. “Thanks.”  

“Yeah,” says Chris, but he’s frowning at Winter, who’s now scowling in the direction the teenagers went.

Seb turns to Chris, and the two of them have a quick, silent argument over who’ll be the one to talk to him. Seb loses pretty much right away, since the only counter argument he can come up with is that Chris (sort of) looks like the guy’s best friend. Chris gives him a skeptical glare like he knows exactly what Seb’s thinking, and Seb rolls his eyes, moves cautiously into Winter’s line of sight.

“Hey. You okay?” he asks softly.

Winter shakes his head, but it’s not a negation— more like he’s rousing himself from a daze. “As okay as I can be, under the circumstances,” he replies, and he sounds all right. Not as freaked as he did when he first arrived, at least. “But next time...”

He trails off. “Yeah?” Sebastian prompts, but Winter is looking at Chris now, and rolling his left shoulder with that peculiar sound that makes Chris’s eyes widen.

“Next time, don’t hug me,” Winter finishes, his intonation completely flat and bordering on dangerous.

Chris nods, edging back from him, even though they’re already standing almost three feet apart. “Understood,” he says clearly. “Not a hugger.”

“I could’ve told you that,” Seb mutters. He jerks his head in the direction of the hotel. “Let’s go,” he says, “before they have a chance to round up some friends and come back.”

He leads Chris and Winter on a winding tour of the back alleys — places that a guy in his tax bracket normally wouldn’t take a chance on, but Seb feels pretty safe with his assassin twin at his side — until they find themselves in the back parking lot of the hotel. He stops Chris when he reaches for the door, though, and digs in his pockets.

Because he’ll be damned if he doesn’t deserve a cigarette, given the night he’s having.


	3. Steve

Steve’s hunched over his desk, Coulson’s report on the aliens spread out in front of him. He’s been scouring it forever, it seems, and he hasn’t found anything that might explain how a piece of what appears to be rock could open a portal to an alternate dimension and swap out his best friend for a doppelganger of his lover.

He stretches, rolling his tense neck muscles, and fumbles blindly for his mug. The coffee is stone cold, of course, but he swallows it anyway; he’s had worse, and he really does need the caffeine. He’s been without sleep for almost sixty hours now, since he and Sam were about to head to bed after their mission when Dr. Cho called them back to the lab because their souvenir, as she called it, was misbehaving.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Steve drains the bitter dregs from his cup, and slides his chair back to head to the kitchen for more. The pot’s gone cold by now, too, but microwaves are high on Steve’s list of favorite inventions of the 20th century. The light from the machine gives a warm glow to the kitchen, and the hum is almost relaxing. He leans against the counter and waits.

If things were different — if Bucky weren’t missing and possibly wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting populace — Steve might have found this whole situation entertaining. The idea of alternate dimensions, for example, sounds like something ripped from the pages of the comic books that he was always borrowing from Buck when they were kids. And watching Sam interact with Anthony has been hilarious; they’re incredibly different, which is a fact that they both seem to find annoying. But Anthony’s charming, in his own way, and Steve thinks that, given a few more days in each other’s company, they’d be good friends — maybe even the kind of friends who wouldn’t mind if Steve asked them to go to bed with him.

Steve shifts against the counter. He shouldn’t be thinking of this right now. But the image has been in the back of his mind since Anthony first appeared, and he’s too tired to fend it off anymore. He lets his eyes close and shoves aside his worry for a moment. He lets himself be greedy, lets himself imagine the three of them together. His body aches with arousal at the thought — he and Sam had only just gotten started when they were interrupted earlier, and, for all that he’d rolled his eyes at Sam’s joke about Steve’s balls matching his uniform color, Steve feels it. Especially now, with fatigue itching at his eyes and weighing down his limbs. He wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and find Sam warm under the sheets. And two Sams— well, that would be even better.

The microwave beeps — so handy, Steve will never get sick of it — and Steve rouses himself back to consciousness, to reason. Anthony’s married, and he doesn’t know that Sam and Steve are together, and, anyway, Steve should really be devoting his energy to figuring out what happened to Bucky and how they’re going to get him back instead of pursuing idle fantasies in the middle of the night.

A thump in the hallway startles him as he’s stirring sugar into his coffee, but he relaxes a second later when he hears Sam swear.

“Ow. Goddammit.”

Steve fights back a laugh. In the air, Sam’s nothing but graceful, but on the ground...

“Did you trip over your shoes again?” he calls softly, as he emerges from the kitchen and flicks on a lamp in the living room.

“No,” Sam replies, coming into the room. He’s rubbing his arm and squinting in the half-light. “I’ll have you know I walked into the doorframe.”

Steve chuckles as he goes to him; he can’t help but be drawn to Sam like a magnet. He cups Sam’s jaw, kisses his forehead, his lips, his fingers, where they’re still curled over his bicep. He straightens up to find Sam’s mouth again, but stops short when he realizes that Sam’s gone perfectly still, his eyes wide.

“Sam, what’s wrong?” Steve tries to ask, but his brain catches up before he can get all the words out, and he realizes his mistake. “Oh, God,” he breathes. “Anthony. I— I’m so sorry, I—”

But Anthony takes his wrist when he tries to pull back and gives Steve a gentle smile. “Well, that takes care of step one,” he says, inexplicably.

Steve frowns, confused. “What?”

Anthony doesn’t say anything more, and Steve doesn’t move, even though he probably should. Instead, he watches, spellbound, as Anthony leans in, slow but steady, and kisses him— his lips are just like Sam’s, right down to the prickle of his beard. Steve’s eyes close, almost involuntarily, as he kisses back— just as hesitant. Soon he’s letting Anthony move his hands lower, until Steve’s gripping his hips, fingers inching down to the familiar swell of his ass, and the kiss isn’t hesitant anymore, it’s Anthony’s tongue parting Steve’s lips, rough and demanding, hot like liquor. It’s good, it’s _really_ good, it’s exactly what Steve’s been craving, been _needing_ for hours now, but—

“Anthony,” Steve gasps, breaking away. He’s so turned on he feels drunk, lightheaded with it, but he forces his legs to move, to put some distance between them. “I— we can’t do this.”

“Why not?” asks a voice right behind Steve. Warm hands encircle him, sneak under the waistband of the loose pants he’s wearing, while familiar lips brush his neck. “See, we’ve been talking—”

“Sam,” Steve manages to interrupt, his voice breaking the word into two syllables as Sam takes his cock in hand, strokes it in a light, perfect rhythm.

“—and I was telling Sam about how I always thought Cap oughta be getting laid more,” Anthony finishes, his eyes down, locked on Sam’s wrist disappearing into Steve’s pants. “It gave Sam some ideas, and, what can I say, I’m a helpful guy, so—”

“God, Anthony, shut up,” Sam says, teeth at Steve’s ear. “Just kiss him again, I wanna see.”

“God, Sam, take his pants off,” Anthony counters with a wink at Steve. “I wanna see, too.”

“I must be dreaming,” Steve observes.

Anthony laughs before taking Steve’s mouth again. Sam’s lips caress the back of Steve’s neck at the same time, triggering a wave of chills that course through Steve’s entire body. Sam thumbs the wet head of Steve’s cock, and Steve hears himself moan into Anthony’s mouth.

“You’re not dreaming, baby,” Sam murmurs, low and reassuring. “We’re here.”

“But,” Steve tries to say, when Anthony lets him come up for air.

Sam shushes him. “Just relax, let us do this.”

Steve bites down on Anthony’s bottom lip when Sam works his pants down, gets a better grip, strokes him faster. He can feel it building, he’s so close he can almost taste it, but it’s not quite enough, he needs _more._ He reaches down, groping blindly, finds the hem of Anthony’s shirt and yanks it up, manhandles and maneuvers Anthony just so— there, _there_.

God, that’s good. He thinks maybe he says that out loud.

“He’s pushy, isn’t he,” Anthony comments. His breath is hot against Steve’s ear, only inches from where Sam’s licking, kissing, sucking.

“You have no idea,” Sam agrees.

Steve can’t say anything in his defense, he’s lost, the sensation taking over— he’s rocking his hips, fucking Sam’s fist, the warm friction of Anthony’s skin against his making everything hotter, better—

“That’s it, that’s it,” someone says — it might even be him, and just like that Steve’s coming so hard it’s like a brick through a window. He’s left shattered and breathless, weak at the knees.

He must black out a minute, because the next thing he knows he’s being helped into the bedroom. He sits on the edge of the mattress and lets Sam — this time he knows it’s Sam — pull his pants off the rest of the way. He smiles, tilts his head up, and Sam obliges him, leaning down for a kiss that has Steve falling back onto the bed. Sam’s tongue is perfect, slipping between his parted lips, warm and wet and familiar. Steve could do this all night.

“Damn,” says Anthony. Steve breaks off kissing Sam to roll his head to see him standing in the doorway. Steve reaches for him, his arm flopping clumsily.

“Get over here,” he instructs, and Anthony smiles, bright and beautiful like Sam, but with an edge of mischief that Steve has never seen on Sam’s face.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m staying,” he drawls, climbing into bed on Steve’s left. “But you look like you’re done.”

“Just need a minute,” says Steve. He’s exhausted, it’s true, but there’s no way he’s going to let himself sleep now. He manages a lopsided grin in Sam’s direction. “Feel free to start without me.”

Sam laughs, but he shakes his head. “Nope. Too weird. We’re just in this for you.”

“ _He’s_ just in this for you,” Anthony corrects him. “I’m up for anything.”

“I thought you were straight,” Steve says. He’s waking up enough to think this through a little more. “And married.”

Anthony shakes his head and sits Steve up, takes off Steve’s shirt. “Open marriage,” he explains. “And I never said nothing about being straight.”

“Oh,” Steve gasps, as Anthony’s lips land on his right nipple. “Good.”

“Very good,” Anthony agrees.

His voice is a rumble against Steve’s chest, and Steve closes his eyes, lets himself fall back a little, trusting Sam to catch him. Sam does one better, pulling Steve sideways and backwards until he’s spread out like a feast between them, and Anthony’s nosing down his belly with that damned smirk twisting his lips again.

“What’s he like, Sam?” he asks.

“What’s he like?” Sam repeats. He’s shuffling behind Steve, wrestling to get his own clothes off. After a moment, there’s nothing between them, and Steve can feel the warm, solid line of Sam’s cock against his lower back.

“Yeah,” says Anthony, kissing and licking at the base of Steve’s dick. It’s nice and gently arousing, now that they’ve taken the edge off. “What’s he like, what’s he into, what’s his thing?”

“Oh,” says Sam. He pauses thoughtfully, his hands skimming over Steve’s chest like he can’t help it, like Steve is his to touch. He is, of course, and Steve arches up into it, sighing happily.

“I like this,” he says, and Anthony chuckles.

“Makes sense. Nobody ever touch you much, huh?” he asks.

“I’m making up for it,” Sam answers, sounding a little defensive.

“Sure you are, baby,” Anthony says, winking at him. Steve feels the rush of air on his neck when Sam huffs out an exasperated breath.

“Why don’t you just put a cork in it?” Sam tells him. “And by cork, I mean Steve’s cock.”

Anthony laughs outright, long and loud, his eyes crinkled with mirth. “Man,” he says after a moment. “Remind me to tell you about the freeway scene.”

Steve turns his head to exchange a glance with Sam. He’s about to ask, but Anthony takes advantage of his distraction to do as Sam said. He pulls Steve’s dick into his mouth all in one go, hot and slick and just tight enough to make Steve lose his breath. Before he can catch it, Sam ducks in, kisses Steve over his shoulder, messy and wet. Steve’s hips hitch forward, despite the awkward angle, and Anthony makes a strangled noise. He pulls off, Steve’s cock slipping from his mouth, nudging his chin and cheek instead.

“Damn,” he says again. “I don’t know if I can keep up with two superheroes.”

The plan comes to Steve’s mind fully formed — as tactics often do — and he sits up, kisses Anthony full and lush, tastes all three of them where their lips meet, mingled so perfectly. 

“Yes, you can,” Steve tells him earnestly. “I want you to fuck me,” he adds, and Anthony’s eyes widen.

He looks over Steve’s shoulder like a deer in the headlights, like he’s asking Sam for permission. Whatever he sees there must reassure him, though, because a minute later he’s on his feet, tugging his shirt off over his head and stepping out of his pants. Steve drinks in the sight of him, noticing right away that Anthony’s not nearly as scarred as Sam is. It takes him a second to realize that Anthony does have something that Sam doesn’t, though: tattoos, three of them. Dates, by the look of it, written in small black print on his left pectoral, like they’re over his heart.

“My kids’ birthdays,” Anthony explains, seeing Steve looking. Steve smiles, and Anthony brings a hand up to cup his jaw. “You’re so pretty,” he murmurs.

“Isn’t he, though?” Sam chimes in from where he’s propped against the headboard, stroking his cock in a slow, gentle rhythm. “You wanna get this show on the road, or what?” he asks.

Steve reaches over, takes his hand away. “You’re not getting off that easy,” he says. “This isn’t a spectator sport.”

Sam’s eyebrows lift. “It’s not?”

“Not a chance,” Steve reiterates firmly. He crawls to him, feels Sam shiver when he takes him by the hips and tugs him down onto his back. Sam looks up at him, pupils huge in the dim light of the bedside lamp.

“Anthony?” Steve says, without looking away from Sam’s face. “Can you get the supplies from the night stand, please?”

“Yes, sir,” Anthony replies, and Steve hears him move.  “Who could refuse you when you’re that polite?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Sam says. He’s giving Steve a fond, playful look, and Steve loves him so damned much it almost hurts.

He just can’t help ducking down and kissing Sam again, slow and sweet. While he does that, though, he reaches back, trusting Anthony to know what he’s asking for, and he gets a little jolt of satisfaction when he feels the cold lube bottle land in his palm. He opens it, slicks his fingers, and eases Sam’s thighs apart.

“Anthony’s gonna fuck me,” Steve murmurs into Sam’s neck, “and I’m gonna fuck you. Okay?”

Breathless, his eyes closed, Sam nods. Steve looks over his shoulders to find Anthony nodding, too, a similarly eager expression on his face.

“Good,” Steve says softly. “Let me get him ready, and then you can do the same to me.”

He sets to work opening Sam up, taking his time, his own arousal fading into a quiet background hum that spikes periodically when Anthony brushes his fingers down Steve’s spine, or kisses his shoulder. Finally, when Sam’s gripping the bed sheet so hard he’s practically tearing it into strips, Steve kisses his lips, his belly button, and his dick one last time before he nudges him over onto all fours. He settles on his knees, spreads his legs for Anthony.

Cold, slick fingers circle his asshole at once, and Steve grunts in surprise when one pushes inside seconds later. It hurts a little, but Steve likes it that way.

“How did you—?” he starts to ask, but Sam laughs a little. “You told him,” Steve concludes.

“Sure did,” Anthony confirmed. “Like I said, Sam had some ideas.”

“Huh,” says Steve. He lets his eyes close, focusing on the sensation — Anthony’s other hand is squeezing Steve’s ankle, hard enough to make his toes tingle.

“Not like I couldn’t have guessed,” Anthony goes on, a second later. “You seem to like getting punched after all.”

Sam hums, reminding Steve of what they’re doing here, what his plan is. He slides three fingers in, just to be sure — Sam wriggles, the air whoosing out of his lungs, and hangs his head between his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, come on, baby, I’m ready, do me.”

Steve lines himself up, eases in, feeling the mattress shift as Anthony moves with him. There’s another twinge of discomfort when Anthony takes his finger out — but it only adds to the heat coiling in his belly at the tight feel of Sam’s walls pressing in around the head of his cock. He pulls back, then gives Sam a little more, working his way inside in small increments, letting Sam get used to the feel, the stretch, like he himself is, as Anthony nudges the tip of a second finger inside him.

“You like this?” he asks, and Steve can only nod. The hurt of it is fading quicker than he’d like, though, and the pleasure is growing — he’s not going to make it very long if Anthony stays this gentle.

“Harder,” he says, pulling almost all the way out of Sam before thrusting back in, slow and sure.

“He likes it rough,” Sam agrees, turning his head to look Steve in the eye. “Pull his hair and smack his ass.”

 _God._ Steve’s mouth goes completely dry, like it does whenever Sam talks dirty. He drops desperate kisses up Sam’s shoulder until their mouths meet, sloppy and uncoordinated. He’s just barely getting into it when Anthony grabs him, fingers twisting in his hair to yank him back. His cock is fever-hot, pressing against Steve’s ass.

“Like this?” he practically growls, and Sam nods.

“Like that,” he agrees. “Fuck him as hard as you want, he won’t break me.”

“I can take it,” Steve tells him breathlessly.

Anthony makes an impatient sound and shoves him down, until he’s all but plastered to Sam’s back, caught between them— exactly where he wants to be. Anthony fingers him a moment longer, the ache and stretch of it turning Steve’s insides to molten metal, so that when Anthony’s cock enters him, huge and hard, it’s exquisitely agonizing.

He hears himself cry out, feels his body carry Anthony’s momentum forward into Sam for one thrust, two, and then he turns himself solid, like a version of his shield, absorbing the impact of Anthony’s rough movements and fucking Sam soft in return. He’s fucking both of them the way they want — Sam steady and slow, Anthony fast and shallow — taking what he needs in turn, and it feels good— it feels so good to be used like this. He won’t last much longer, with Anthony filling him up just right and Sam so tight around him, but he grits his teeth, determined to hang on until they get what they need.

Right when his control is starting to fray, Anthony smacks him. The crack of his hand on Steve’s ass catches him off-guard, forces him deeper and faster into Sam than he’d meant to. The fresh, blooming sting helps Steve focus, blurs the edge of pleasure, brings him back to reality, to Sam, who’s saying Steve’s name like it’s the only word he knows.

“What d’you need, baby?” Steve asks him, his voice ragged to his own ears.

“Steve,” Sam groans again. Writhing on Steve’s dick, changing the angle. “Feel so good— touch me, Steve, please,” he pants.

Steve trusts one arm with his and Anthony’s weight, and uses the other to grab Sam’s cock. It’s so wet at the tip, pre-come slicking the way for Steve’s palm, and he can’t bear to go slow, not with the way that Anthony is taking him deep, the way that Steve’s rocking between them, teetering on the edge of too much.

Three strokes later, and Sam clenches up around him, he cries out. Steve’s fist is hot and sticky, Sam’s pleasure is driving him wild. Steve fucks him through it, he’s so close it hurts to fight it, but he does, he does. When Sam stops twitching it’s a relief to pull out and let Sam turn over, to take refuge in his slow kisses, even as Anthony exhales a punched-out breath behind him.

“Fuck yes,” Anthony says, and he draws back to change his pace, starts driving into Steve in long, sure strokes. Steve accidentally bites Sam’s lip and makes an apologetic sound— he’s too far gone for words, and Sam seems to understand, running his fingers through Steve’s sweaty hair and smiling up at him with his dark eyes dazed.

“I’m gonna— oh, Jesus, fucking fuck,” Anthony exclaims, “I’m—I’m—”

His pace gets frenzied, pounding into Steve hard and fast until he stops abruptly, stays inside, exhales long and loud against Steve’s neck. The air sets shivers running down Steve’s spine despite the warm bodies on either side of him, despite the sweat on his skin. His balls are tight and heavy; he can feel his pulse, can practically see it making his cock twitch. He’ll go off like a shot the second someone— assuming they’re going to—

A wet touch — quick and soft along the edge of his balls — startles him, he has a quick look down to see Anthony there, his head on Sam’s thigh, and then he’s got the condom off and he’s suckling the tip of Steve’s dick, and Sam’s pulling him into a kiss, and oh— _oh_ , there it is, the relief he feels when he starts to come, it’s celestial, like he’s outside his body for one lingering moment, and then he’s back in the thick of it, wave upon wave of pleasure washing over him, each one getting less intense, ebbing away like a midnight tide, leaving him completely drained.

“Not to sound like a broken record,” Steve hears one of them say, what feels like a long time later. “But damn.”

“About sums it up,” the other one agrees.

Steve feels them moving him, catches bits of their conversation — “He’s fucking wrecked, dude.” “I know, it’s something else, isn’t it?” — while they get him cleaned up and pull the covers up over him.

“Stay,” he manages to mumble finally, when one of them starts to get out of bed. He isn’t sure if minutes or hours have passed, but the room is dark and quiet, the bed warm.

More whispers, ending in an exasperated sigh and another “Shut up, Anthony,” and then there are arms around him, a chest at his back, and a shoulder for him to rest his head on.

And then, at last, he sleeps.

* * *

When he wakes up, the bedroom is filled with sunny daylight and Sam’s voice is saying his name. He opens his eyes, finds Sam’s worried face just inches from his.

“We’ve got a problem,” he says seriously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: The tattoo detail is completely fabricated.


	4. Bucky

“No, Chris, it’s okay,” Sebastian is saying on the other side of the door. Bucky is smoking on the balcony, the city spread out far below him. “You don’t have to hang around if—”

“It’s fine,” Chris replies. “There are nights I feel like going out alone, Seb, but tonight’s not one of them. Without you and Mackie, there’s no point. Besides—” He drops his voice, and Bucky has to strain to hear him. “Don’t you think someone should be here with you in case of, you know, emergency?” 

“He’ll probably be all right,” Sebastian insists, though he sounds less than certain.

 _Smart boy,_ Bucky thinks with some approval.

“I’m staying,” Chris announces. _Also smart._ “We’ll get some beer, some room service, put on a movie or something — introduce Buck to our world a little.”

Bucky winces. It hurts — hearing that name, that voice — when he knows that the real Steve is so far away. It is a homesickness that he hasn’t felt for ages — not since he went overseas and left everyone he knew behind in Brooklyn. For a long time after that, he didn’t remember home enough to miss it.

Now home is the team. And Natasha — there’s an empty spot in his chest where Nat belongs, and it hurts without her here.

As he finishes his cigarette and extinguishes it in the ashtray, Bucky wonders how close the team is to reverse-engineering the portal. Surely they’re working on it; Natasha would have noticed his absence, and, even allowing her some time to assume that he’d just needed space, she would have raised the alarm by now. Which means that she and the others are going to bring him home. He just wished he knew when.  

He exhales the last cloud of smoke and opens the sliding door. Chris and Sebastian are at the desk, flicking through a menu, and Chris looks up with that bright grin that’s so common on his face, so rare on Steve’s— though Bucky’s been seeing it more and more since he and Sam got together.

Sam. Another throb of homesickness. He hasn’t met this universe’s Sam yet, he wonders if he will. Right now, though, there are more pressing concerns.

“What do you say to some burgers?” Chris is asking him. “Or we could do something fancier, something you haven’t tried before.”

Bucky shakes his head. His body was fuelled too long by tubes to allow him to be very adventurous when it comes to his diet. “A burger is fine,” he says, hoping that neither of them will ask for further explanation than that.

Sebastian is staring at him — he seems to do that a lot. It would be unnerving, except for the fact that his expression is completely open — Bucky can tell that there’s a lot going through his head, but none of it is malevolent. In fact, Bucky’s pretty sure there isn’t a malevolent bone in Sebastian’s body, which makes him wonder how in the hell he could play the role of him.

He shakes his head again, this time to clear it. Thinking of himself as a role in someone else’s drama makes his head hurt more than usual.

Chris finishes placing their order and hangs up the phone. He drums his fingers on his thighs, bounces a little on his toes — like Steve, he’d be a terrible sniper, Bucky thinks suddenly, and it makes him chuckle. 

“What?” asks Chris. He’s smiling, but Bucky can see the edge of nerves underneath.

“Nothing,” says Bucky. “It’s just— neither of you know how to sit still.”

Chris looks to Sebastian, clearly still lost in his own little world, and frowns in confusion.

“Not you two,” Bucky clarifies. “You and— well, the other you.”

“Oh,” says Chris. His cheeks go pink. Combined with his dark hair and beard, he looks rosy and wholesome — a dangerous combination, if there’s anything like Steve’s penchant for getting into trouble hidden underneath. “Sorry, I guess I can’t help it. You make me— uh, never mind.”

His face is blazing now, and Bucky can guess why. “It’s smart that you’re nervous around me,” he says. “I’m not exactly safe.”

“But you’re better now, right?” Sebastian asks suddenly. “You’re out of cryo, so the doctors, they fixed your head?”

Bucky opens his mouth to explain, but Chris holds up a hand. “Maybe you shouldn’t,” he says. “Our stories obviously haven’t caught up to your reality yet, and if we — I mean, me and Seb — if we learn too much, it might change your world.”

“Or ours,” Sebastian agrees. Then he sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “You know, when I woke up this morning, I did not think my day would involve time travel and interdimensional portals.”

Bucky laughs. “You get used to it,” he says. Then he asks what he’s been meaning to ask for hours. “Do you have a Natasha in this world? Or a Sam?”

Sebastian nods and tells him all about Anthony (AKA Mackie AKA Chocolaccino AKA Mack Attack), who’s clearly one of Sebastian’s favorite people. Chris tells him about Scarlett, one of his oldest friends, and shows Bucky pictures of her toddler.  

The news that she has a child brings Bucky up short. Natasha can’t have children, and she’s never really wanted them, either.

“Can I see her?” he asks, hit with another wave of longing, an ache to see Natasha’s smile.

“She’s not here,” Sebastian says. His tone is gentle now, apologetic. “They split us up this press tour, so she’s with Robert and Don and—”

“Team Iron Man,” Chris puts in, rolling his eyes as he says it. “Even though Nat’s really more of a neutral player. It’s this idiotic marketing campaign they devised.” He waves a hand dismissively. “Anyway. I miss her, too.”

“Mackie’s just down the hall, though,” Sebastian adds. “He’s a lot of fun, you’d— well,” he interrupts himself with a slight frown. “I don’t know if you’d like him, actually. But we can introduce you.”

“Desperate to impress, there, Sebby?” Chris says, and Sebastian rolls his eyes, even though his cheeks are scarlet.

Bucky has to hide a smile behind his metal hand — it wasn’t that long ago that Steve was teasing him like this about Natasha. He’s about to tell Chris and Sebastian about it when there’s a knock on the door. It startles him, and Sebastian smiles slightly when he sees Bucky jump.

“It’s all right,” he says reassuringly. “That’s just the food.”

Bucky nods, but he gets out of the door’s line of sight anyway, just in case, while Chris and Sebastian open it. He can smell it right away, and his stomach rumbles. He isn’t sure when he last ate. He checks the clock and does a double take before he remembers that he’s in LA — three hours have passed, but it’s still the same time. Assuming time moves at the same speed here — Chris had said that his reality was ahead of theirs; what if time moves more slowly in this world? Who knows how long he’s been—

“Hey,” Chris interrupts, waving a face in front of Bucky’s face, but not too close. “You in there?”

Bucky blinks. “What?”

Chris laughs and turns to Sebastian. “I guess you two aren’t so different after all. Let’s eat.”

* * *

Over dinner, they tell him about their lives, their careers outside of playing Steve and Bucky — they joke about terrible agents, typecasting, and what it’s like being _teen heartthrobs_. Some of it Bucky can relate to — for a little while in the 40s, he was a celebrity, though the war was kind of a big distraction at the time — and some of it is completely foreign to him. Like when Sebastian says something about ‘Internet mee-mees’ and Chris shoves his shoulder playfully.

“You know that’s not how it’s pronounced,” he tells him, and Sebastian just laughs.

Watching them interact, Bucky feels another wave of aching happiness hit him. He wonders if he and Steve ever seemed like this to an outsider — free and easy, full of light and life. He flashes back to his visit to the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian, and seeing the black and white footage of them laughing together. This gives him the same feeling — he still doesn’t remember what they’d found so funny all those years ago, but he wants to be in on the joke, smile that big, laugh that loud.

“Are you okay?” Sebastian asks him at one point.

Bucky shrugs, sighs. “Been a weird day.”

“Tell me about it,” Sebastian agrees with an all-too familiar wry grin.

* * *

After they’ve eaten, Chris flops down on one of the beds and grabs the TV remote. Sebastian settles on the other, and Bucky hesitates in the middle of the room for a moment before he sits at Sebastian’s side. Sebastian sends him a quick smile when he does — and Bucky is surprised at how bright it is — but they don’t speak. Chris is flipping through channels, scanning page after page of the guide, before finally—

“Aha!” he declares. “Got it.”

Sebastian groans. “Seriously? Why are you doing this to me?”

Chris extends one leg across the gap, nudges Sebastian’s thigh with his socked foot. “I just like to see you suffer,” he says.

Bucky frowns, confused about what he means, but before he can say anything, he hears a familiar voice on the television.

“Well, well, well,” the voice says. Bucky looks, and his mouth falls open. The short hair, the swagger, the smirk, it’s—

“That’s—” he says.

“Me,” Sebastian replies, somewhat muffled. He’s holding his hands over his face. “I can’t believe you’d embarrass me like this, Chris. I mean, I _believe_ it, but—”

“Shh, shh! This is my favorite line,” Chris interrupts.

“Your face is bullshit,” says a short blonde woman on the screen.

Chris laughs, loud. “It’s funny because it’s true.”

“I hate you,” Sebastian says, matter-of-fact.

“I know,” Chris replies carelessly.

“Like you’re one to talk,” Sebastian mutters a moment later, when his character is finally off the screen. “Didn’t you stick a banana up your butt in one movie? Why don’t we show him that?”

“You did what?” Bucky says.

Chris’s cheeks are pink above his beard — he and Steve really do have that in common — but he doesn’t back down. “If only we could,” he sighs, put-upon. “Sadly, my embarrassing movies aren’t on demand right now.”

“Don’t tempt me, I’ll stream it,” Sebastian threatens. He pulls his laptop out of a bag beside the bed, and Chris changes the channel immediately.

“So, Bucky,” Chris says a few minutes later. “How do you feel about whiskey?”

* * *

By the time Chris leaves, it’s late — even without taking Bucky’s interdimensional jetlag into account. Bucky’s about as close to drunk as he can get anymore, which translates into being tired and mildly dizzy.

“Hey,” Sebastian says suddenly.

Sebastian is drunker. Until now, Bucky thought he was asleep, actually, since it’s been several minutes since he last moved. He kept up with Bucky, matching him shot-for-shot for a good long while, goaded on by Chris, of course. Only once their eyes went glassy did Bucky realize that he’d have to be the grown-up here and take their booze away. While Chris staggered down the hall to his own room, Sebastian sank onto the floor, his back against the side of the bed, which is where he’s stayed, until now.

“Hey,” he says again, and stirs like he’s about to get to his feet.

Bucky sits up, preparing to catch him when he inevitably stumbles. It’s been a while since he had to do this — the last time was in Wakanda, maybe, when Sam had a bit too much of the king’s wine — but it comes back to him. _Mother hen,_ the guys used to call him, he remembers suddenly. He chuckles a little at the memory of dragging Dum Dum away from the bar one morning, only an hour before reveille.

“What’s so funny?” Sebastian asks. His words are a little slurred, but his eyes, now that they’re open, are surprisingly clear. “Where’d you go just now?”

Bucky blinks, considering what Sebastian has asked, and gives him an honest answer. “Forty-three,” he says. “I think. Might have been forty-four.”

“Wow,” Sebastian mutters. “What was that like?”

“Dirty, mostly,” Bucky replies, and he tells Sebastian the story, making him laugh.

There’s a lull afterwards, long enough that Bucky thinks maybe Sebastian is dozing off, but then he sits up, frowns thoughtfully at Bucky’s left arm.

“Can I—” he starts to ask.

The unfinished question hangs uncomfortably between them. “Can you what?” Bucky prompts him.

Sebastian shakes his head. “Never mind. I was just— but. Never mind.”

Bucky arranges his face into what Natasha calls his interrogation glare. _No one can resist it for long,_ she loves to tease him. God, he misses her.

Sure enough, a second later, Sebastian’s cheeks redden and he goes on, stumbling and awkward. “I guess I was just wondering if I could — or, well, if you could — I want to... Can I touch your arm?”

Bucky’s surprised. Normally he’d hesitate before granting a request like this — the thing is a weapon, after all — but he’s had just enough whiskey to lay aside his fears. How much damage could Sebastian do, anyway?

“Sure,” he says, standing up. “Come here, kid.”

He pulls Sebastian to his feet and leads the way to the balcony, where he digs out his smokes and offers the pack. Sebastian takes one, lights it, and inhales, closing his eyes and sighing like he’s sunken into a warm bath.

“So, quitting’s going good?” Bucky razzes him.

“Fuck off,” Sebastian says idly, through a mouthful of smoke.

Bucky laughs, puts his cigarette between his lips so he can work his arm out of its sleeve. Sebastian watches him closely while he does it. He glances up once more for confirmation, and when Bucky nods, he runs his palm along the metal, starting at the star and working his way down.

“It’s beautiful,” Sebastian says, awed.

Bucky raises his eyebrows but doesn’t comment. That’s not a word he’d ever associate with this thing.

He twitches involuntarily at the almost-tickle of Sebastian’s touch, though, and the plates shift and ripple. Sebastian starts in surprise, then grins around his cigarette and puts both hands on Bucky’s forearm, squeezing slightly.

“Can you feel that?” he asks.

“Sort of,” Bucky replies with half a shrug that makes the metal quiver again. “It’s not a dead zone, but it’s not like my other arm, either.”

“Huh.” Sebastian lets Bucky go, takes a drag from his smoke. “So when Iron Man—” he begins, and then he stops himself.

But Bucky nods, knowing exactly what he was about to say. “Yeah,” he says, exhaling a thin stream of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “It hurt like hell.”

Sebastian grimaces. “Obviously it got better, though,” he says hesitantly, after a pause.

Bucky cracks a wry smile — humor is still the easiest way to deflect. “Yeah, it grew back while I was sleeping. That’s happened a couple times now.”

Sebastian shakes his head, like he can see right through the defense mechanism. He probably can.

Bucky sighs. He can tell there are a lot more questions that Sebastian wants to ask, maybe so he can get the characterization right, maybe just because he’s curious and empathetic. Bucky turns, leans back against the railing, readies himself for a difficult conversation — but Sebastian doesn’t ask. He just stares some more, and then puts his hand on Bucky’s wrist again.

Bucky barely has time to realize what’s happening before Sebastian is using his grip as an anchor to lean in and press their mouths together. Sebastian’s lips are warm and dry, slightly chapped, and Bucky can taste the traces of whiskey on their surface, and then Sebastian is pulling away.

It’s not sexual, not even a romantic kiss. More a point of contact, of trust and recognition: _I know you, you are safe with me,_ Sebastian seems to be saying.

“Thanks,” Bucky says softly.

Sebastian holds eye contact a few seconds longer, then nods. He understands Bucky’s meaning, as Bucky understands his, and there’s no need for any more words.

They go back to smoking in silence, but they stand closer together, and when they go to bed a little while later, Sebastian opens his arms, and the day has just been too long and strange and painful for Bucky to resist the embrace.  

* * *

He wakes up to another flash of light, and an unfortunately familiar twist of momentum.

 

 


	5. Anthony

It’s weird — and isn’t that a fucking understatement — that Anthony doesn’t feel weird.

He wakes up next to Captain Fucking America — maybe he ought to move that adjective, actually — and his alter-ego is pacing the room, talking on the phone and shooting Anthony worried looks. Frantic, even. So Anthony gets out of bed, and that’s when there’s a flash, and the world goes sideways.

Sam’s still on the other side of the room, but the space between them has expanded somehow — Anthony has a quick flashback to that time he unknowingly smoked acid-laced weed in high school. His hearing cuts out. He blinks, and he’s in his LA hotel room again, the clothes he wore to the interview earlier still rumpled on the bed. He blinks again, and he’s outside, in a violently bright world where everything — the grass, the buildings, the sidewalks full of meandering pedestrians wearing strange outfits — has blurry edges, like a pixelated image. It hurts his eyes, so he closes them, and when he opens them, he’s back in Sam and Steve’s bedroom, with a half-dressed Steve Rogers gripping his arm so tight it almost hurts.

“Are you okay?” he asks urgently.

Anthony shrugs, then nods. He’s fine.

Which is _fucking weird_ , because when they get to the lab Dr. Cho starts telling him that his matter is being distorted, pulled in all directions. And you’d think — Anthony would think — that that would hurt or something, but he feels oddly distant from it all.

“I may not have travelled through dimensions,” Scott says when Anthony explains this to the group as best he can. “But if it’s anything like my trip to the micro-verse, the brain can’t comprehend it, so there’s nothing. Just a blank.”

“And if the matter is dissolving,” Dr. Cho goes on, “it’s possible that it’s creating a sort of syphon, pulling us with it.”

“Okay, but how do we fix it?” Sam demands. “Because I don’t think we’re gonna be able to do much if reality collapses around us.”

“True,” Dr. Cho agrees. “But if we can act fast—”

The lights flicker, and Anthony doesn’t hear the rest of Dr. Cho’s proposal because he’s not in the lab anymore. He’s on a cliff overlooking a bright blue ocean. There’s no wind. Behind him is a vivid green jungle where not a single leaf is stirring. Beside him is a man standing perfectly still, wearing — oh, God, it’s the original Falcon costume, fringes and everything.

A speech bubble appears over Falcon’s head as he scowls at Anthony. “The $@*& did you come from?”

“I don’t know,” Anthony says honestly, and instead of words he hears a sound like pages turning in a breeze. “Love the outfit,” he can’t help adding.

In jerky movements, Falcon looks down at himself and grimaces. “G-damn freaky chicken suit is what it is,” the next bubble reads.

Anthony laughs his way through dimensions, finds himself back in the lab, in the world of muted colors and sound. He has no idea how much time has passed.  

“—energy’s building,” Dr. Cho is explaining. “But we’ll need to nudge it in the right direction to focus it, so we can get Anthony back home.”

“And bring James back,” says the Black Widow.

“That too,” Dr. Cho agrees. “So what I propose is—”

Lightning seems to strike suddenly, blinding and loud like it was the first time, and all at once Anthony is back in the pixelated world, face-to-face with a teenager wearing a penguin costume. Like before, the image is strangely blurry, and there’s a blue label in front of the kid, free-floating. _Falcon,_ it reads in white font.

“Oh, come on,” Anthony groans, even though no sound comes out. What is it with the bird costumes?

A block of text appears over Penguin Falcon’s head. Anthony squints, but he can’t make out the words. It doesn’t matter, though, because a second later the world flashes again, and someone takes his arm.

It’s Steve, in the lab, leading him towards an enclosed box of some kind. “Just hang on, Anthony, it’ll be all right,” he’s saying under his breath like a mantra. “You’ll be all right.”

Anthony opens his mouth, closes it again. He doesn’t know how to tell Steve that, really, he’s fine. It doesn’t hurt a bit, though maybe he’s starting to get a little dizzy, and there’s something wet on his upper lip.

“All right, now, minimum safe distance, everyone,” Dr. Cho announces. Steve looks into Anthony’s eyes and pulls him close impulsively, kisses him hard and quick.

“For luck,” he says, and when he pulls back, there’s a smear of blood on his mouth.

“You’re bleeding,” Anthony starts to say, but a pulse of pain in his head has him closing his eyes again.

He fumbles blindly forward, reaching for Steve, but something crashes into him — the corner of a dresser, sharp and unexpected, right in the back of his thigh.

“Ow,” he mutters, and when he turns around, there’s his face in the mirror, the familiar hotel room behind him in the reflection.

“Now,” he hears Dr. Cho shout from a distance.

There’s a roar of wind in his ears. Lightning crackles around him, sizzling with intensity. In the mirror, faces like his flicker and swirl — the teenaged penguin first, and then the square-jawed man in a white mask with the Falcon emblem over his forehead. A few others, one in green and yellow, one wearing comic-bright red goggles with white fabric around the edges — _Falcon Cap, fuck yeah,_ Anthony can’t help thinking — and finally his own: Sam as Anthony knew him, Sam that he’d talked with late into the night, Sam that had shared his lover with him.

One more blast of wind — icy cold this time — and a flash so bright it obliterates the images, wipes them from the mirror. Anthony has the distinct sensation that he’s falling — deeper and deeper into a swirling, howling void, and it feels like forever before he finally hits the ground.

* * *

 

* * *

 

* * *

Someone is knocking on the door of his hotel room.

Anthony opens his eyes. He’s standing in front of the dresser. His hands braced on the edges, his eyes locked on his reflection. He can’t remember how he got here.

There ought to be more than one face looking back at him. He doesn’t know why he thinks this.

The knock comes again, this time accompanied by a voice that’s distantly familiar. “Hey, Mackie, you in there?”

He blinks. Shakes his head to clear it — which is a huge mistake. Where in the hell did this headache come from?

“One sec,” he manages to call out, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain.

“A sec’s about all we got,” Seb replies, “but okay.”

Anthony hears him shuffling his feet. _So impatient, that boy,_ he thinks. It’s a familiar, reassuring reflex. He starts to feel more settled in his skin. He heads to the door, his eyes still mostly shut.

“Jesus Christ,” Sebastian swears when Anthony gets the door open. “Did you get in a fight last night, or what?”

“I’m all right,” Anthony says, but Seb isn’t buying it.

He shoves his way through and guides Anthony backwards until he’s sitting on the bed. Somewhere, under Anthony’s pain and confusion, he thinks he finds it sweet, the way Seb cares. Like his wife or a lover would. The thought reminds Anthony of something, of someone else. Another pair of light eyes, sharp with worry. He can’t think who that might be.

Anthony glances again at the mirror once he’s on the bed. Again, it gives him a weird feeling — which evaporates when he sees what’s got Seb so upset. His nose looks like it’s been bleeding for some time now, black congealed blood at the edges of his lips. He licks them — thinking vaguely that they taste like someone else.

“Jesus,” Seb murmurs again. He’s got a wet washcloth now, dabbing gingerly at Anthony’s face. “Seriously, man, what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Anthony replies honestly. “What’d we get up to last night?”

“We?” says Sebastian. He pulls back, gives Anthony his patented confused puppy look. “We weren’t— we didn’t go out. I stayed in with Chris.” He hesitates. “I think.”

They stare at each other in silence for a moment, then Anthony reaches out and takes the washcloth, presses it to his aching forehead.

“If neither of us can remember, that’s not a good sign,” he jokes feebly. “Might have to check online, see if there are any incriminating photographs.”

“Yeah,” Sebastian says slowly, his grey eyes cloudy with thought. “Yeah.”

He gets Anthony cleaned up, and Anthony has just swallowed some painkillers when Chris comes into the room, asking — _way_ too loudly — where his team’s at. He shuts up when he sees the bloody cloth in Seb’s hand, the stained t-shirt that Seb made him remove.

“What the—” he starts to say.

“Just a little nosebleed,” Anthony interjects, hoping to catch Chris before he can get too far along the path of freaking out.

It doesn’t work. “My God, what happened, are you all right?” Chris demands.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Anthony insists. And it’s true — he feels almost normal now, and there’s nothing more normal than giving Chris a hard time. “Such a mother hen, Evans, fuck,” he adds.

Seb chuckles like it’s a reflex — that boy laughs at every single joke that Anthony makes. Very good for the self-esteem. A second later, though, that pretty mouth is frowning.

“Mother hen,” Seb repeats, like it means something. “Chris, what did we do last night?”

Chris thinks for a moment, then shakes his head. “I don’t really remember. How much did we drink?”

“Must’ve been a lot,” Anthony says, but Seb talks over him.

“Yeah, well, _somebody_ let me buy smokes,” he accuses Chris. “There’s all kinds of butts in the ashtray, and a half a pack on the nightstand.”

“Don’t look at me,” Chris protests. “There’s a thing in my contract, I can’t even inhale secondhand.”

“That’s not a thing,” Anthony says, and Chris laughs.

“But there was somebody else with us,” Seb says suddenly. He sounds sure of it.

Chris shrugs. “Sorry, buddy, I don’t know. Maybe you were making friends without me?”

Seb falls silent, but he frowns some more until he really does look like that angry cat that’s all over the Internet. Cute, but kinda murder-y.

“Mackie, what’d you do last night?” Chris asks.

Anthony looks at him — really looks, like he’s never seen Chris before — and his body throbs unexpectedly, like it remembers something he doesn’t. He closes his eyes briefly, chases the sensation to a disjointed memory: tight heat, warm skin, fingers buried in blond hair, the sting of—

“Mackie?” Seb prompts him.

Startled, Anthony blinks, looks up, sees that Seb’s holding out a suit in a garment bag. Anthony isn’t sure how long he was lost in thought.

“Sorry,” he says, getting to his feet. “Weird dreams, I guess.” He takes the suit, steps into the bathroom to change.

“What kind of weird dreams?” Seb asks through the door a minute later.

“So fucking nosey, jeez,” Anthony mutters — it’s another reflex, there’s no heat to it — but he pauses in front of the mirror, staring again like he can’t help it. “Weird, sexy dreams,” he says without thinking.

But when he hears Sebastian laugh a little uncomfortably, he feels guilty. Seb’s crush — or whatever it is that’s between them — flares up every now and then, and it’s not fair to torture him. Like pretty much everybody at work, Seb doesn’t know about Anthony’s open marriage or his bisexuality; Anthony keeps thinking he should change that at some point soon. Seb likes him, and he likes Seb back, but the timing has never seemed right.

Today, he thinks maybe that’s changed.  

“There was a guy in a penguin costume,” he adds, opening the door. He loves the puzzled laugh that he gets out of Seb in response, and he lifts his chin, gesturing at his tie, which he tied crookedly on purpose. “Help me out?”

Sebastian smiles, slowly, and steps forward, fixes Anthony’s collar with gentle fingers. There’s something simmering under his touch, a low flame that Anthony suddenly wants to feed, to see how bright it can get.

“Penguins, huh?” Seb says when he steps back a moment later.

Anthony nods. “You bet.”

Sebastian smiles, light and pretty, and goddammit does Anthony ever want to kiss him. He stalls, though, licking his lips and sneaking a glance in Chris’s direction, but he’s as oblivious as ever, not picking up any of what Seb’s laying down. Painfully straight, that one.

“Come on,” Chris says, jerking his head at the door. “We’re gonna be late.”

“Right,” Anthony says, giving Seb what he knows is a significant look. “You go ahead, Chris, we’ll be right down.”

“We— we will?” Sebastian says, a catch in his throat.  

So he _was_ paying attention. Good to know. Anthony smiles, drops his gaze, and watches Sebastian gulp. “Yeah.”

Chris expels a breath and turns away. “Whatever,” he says on his way out. “You guys miss breakfast, it’s not my fault.”

 _No, it’s not,_ Anthony thinks, as he locks the door. But he can’t shake the feeling that Chris has something to do with it, anyway.


	6. Natasha

The explosion rocks her backwards, her ears ringing. She throws out an arm, catches herself on something solid that turns out to be Melinda’s shoulder. May’s steady as a rock, as always; she barely even blinks at the bright blue light and white smoke that’s issuing from the— from— the... what?

Natasha can’t remember.

She blinks, takes in the scene around her. Dr. Cho is in front of the seeming source of the smoke, a pile of faintly blue dust, her hands on the controls for the high-powered laser that she only breaks out for special occasions. Steve is next to an enclosure that’s large enough to hold a man his size, and Sam and Scott are on to the floor. They look just as dazed as Nat feels.

Natasha realizes suddenly what’s wrong with this scene: they’re all unarmed and in their civvies. In fact, she thinks, looking down, her jeans feel strange against her skin — not as soft as what she had on before... whatever this was happened. Still, given the explosion, shouldn’t she have been in uniform? She wishes she could remember, but everything between going to bed last night with James and the bright blue mist that exploded here a minute ago— it's all a blur.

And James. Where is he?

“Is everyone all right?” Steve asks after a long, bleary moment.

“Seems like,” Melinda replies, extracting herself from Natasha’s grip. She gives Nat a rare smile, which Nat returns despite her confusion.

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. Steve extends a hand, helps him up.

Scott reaches for Steve’s hand too, and gets to his feet with a wince. He nods. “I think so. My ass hurts.”

“Thanks for sharing, Tic Tac,” Sam mutters. “What happened?”

“I think it was me,” Dr. Cho says. She steps away from the laser console and squints at the pile of dust that’s still glowing faintly. “Did it work?”

“Did what work?” says Scott.

Dr. Cho frowns. “I was hoping one of you could tell me what I was trying to do.”

“You don’t remember either?” says May.

“That’s bad,” Scott says, sounding alarmed. “That seems really bad.”

Sam holds up his hands, cool and logical. “Okay, no need to panic. Let’s just... retrace our steps.”

“Good thinking,” says Steve. He moves back towards the empty containment unit. “I was here,” he says, “and there was someone...” He frowns, pointing at the unit, “there? We were trying to... do something.”

“That’s great, Steve,” says James’s gravelly voice from behind them. “Very helpful.”

Natasha turns — they all turn — to find James leaning against the doorframe, wearing jeans that are just a hair too tight and a battered old hoodie. The image surprises Natasha somewhat, just as she was surprised by what she was wearing a moment ago. But this jarring thought is interrupted by Steve before she can follow through on it.

“What the hell happened to you, Buck?”

Nat knows what’s upset Steve: James’s nose is dark with dried blood, and when he touches it, a fresh stream starts dripping over his upper lip. He looks down at the bright red smear on his hand like he’s surprised to see it, then he wipes it on his jeans.

“I dunno,” he replies, his voice thick. Natasha darts forward when he sways, and he steadies himself with his left arm around her waist — as gentle as he ever is when he touches her with it. “My head hurts pretty bad. I’d say I tied one on, but with my metabolism...”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Sam asks. From their body language, Natasha can tell that he and Dr. Cho are desperate to get to James, to stop his bleeding and check for further injuries. She’s glad they’re holding themselves back.

James is frowning, blinking rapidly. “Déjà vu,” he mutters.

“You remember déjà vu, or you’re experiencing déjà vu?” Dr. Cho asks.

“Not sure,” says James. He pauses, closes his eyes for a beat. “The second one, I think. I remember something, but I don’t know what or why.” He opens his eyes again, sighs. “I hate this feeling.”

“Well, none of us can remember anything, either,” Scott puts in. “If it helps.”

“It doesn’t,” James says with the ghost of a smile. “But thanks.”

“Would you be okay if we ran a few tests?” Natasha asks James in Russian.

James draws in a breath and nods gingerly. “Yeah,” he says, in English. “So long as I can sit down?”

Nat glances at Sam, who steps forward. Dr. Cho comes over as well, and the two of them lead James to a chair, speak to him in low tones, asking him the standard concussion questions. Dr. Cho asks to draw some blood, preps a syringe. Natasha hovers, gives James a reassuring smile when the needle goes in. She waits until Dr. Cho is finished, and James looks more steady before she turns away and heads to the corner where Steve and Scott are now reviewing security camera footage.

“It’s blank,” Scott tells her as she approaches.

“Blank?” she repeats.

Steve points at the screen. Nat sees the blurry form of Steve, Sam, and Melinda standing between Dr. Cho and a cloud of sparking mist. Steve has his uniform and shield; Melinda has her dual pistols trained on the mist, where it seems like something is moving. Natasha leans closer — she thinks she can almost make out a figure in there, but abruptly the image changes. The screen cuts out, the timestamp leaps ahead almost a full twelve hours, to the bright blast that just happened.

“Huh,” she says. There’s really not that much that she can say. Steve rewinds the footage and starts it again.

“This was last night,” he explains, “after you and Bucky went to bed. Dr. Cho said the alien artifact was misbehaving, so we came down here — I remember that much at least. And....”

He trails off, shifting his posture somewhat. His lip is between his teeth and his eyes are fixed on Sam across the room. Nat knows there’s something else that he remembers, but she isn’t going to ask. It’s really none of her business.

“Now watch,” says Scott. “There. Gone. No wonder my ass hurts,” he adds, as they watch him fly backwards and land heavily on his tailbone.

“Are all the cameras like this?” Natasha asks.

“We’d have to patch into the security room feed to see,” Scott replies. “One sec.”

His fingers dance on the keyboard, and soon they’re flipping through different angles, watching the hours skip ahead in every room of the complex. As they jump from one camera to another, Natasha understands what James meant about hating déjà vu; there’s something familiar about searching through footage like this, and, even though she’s done it in the field more times than she can count, she knows that’s not it.

That knowledge is infuriating.

“Every single one,” Steve concludes with a sigh, once they’ve seen them all skip forward.  

Natasha reaches for the keyboard. “Let me try something.”

Scott hands it over, and she starts breaking through the walls she designed to protect the private footage from her and James’s suite. There are only three cameras — in the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom — but she’s hoping that one of them will shed some light on how James sustained his injuries.

“Camera in the bedroom, huh?” Scott teases.

Nat rolls her eyes. Steve claps a hand on Scott’s shoulder. “As Sam would say: Dude. Don’t.”

“What?” Scott protests innocently. “I just meant that it’s—”

“Finish that sentence, and you’ll learn what happens when an ant pisses off a spider,” Natasha tells him, not once looking up from the keyboard. She hears Steve muffle a little laugh, but she keeps her face stoic through years of practice.

“Here we go,” she adds a moment later, when she’s finally looking at the video feed from her bedroom.

She and James are sleeping side by side, James half-curled away from her. She watches them inhale and exhale three times, before the black-and-white infrared feed suddenly flickers. James sits bolt upright in bed. Nat leans in to see if she can figure out why, and she’s practically blinded by a flash of swirling light that engulfs James completely. She watches him grab his pillow knife, but then the feed jumps ahead, to an empty room that’s lit with the same kind of smoky light. It clears, and James is flat on his back on the bed, in clothes that he definitely wasn’t wearing twelve hours ago.

“Huh,” she says again.

Steve nods silently, watching as James struggles to his feet, his metal hand pressed to his forehead, and leaves. Nat clicks some more keys, they track his progress through the building until he enters the lab and surprises them all. He stops twice on the way, once to pat his pockets like he’s dropped his keys, and once in front of a mirror, where he does something even stranger.

He turns, wrestles his left arm out of its sleeve and stares at its reflection in the glass for a long moment. Slowly, he reaches over with his right hand, runs it along the metal plating. His mouth moves, but the camera is too far away for Natasha to read his lips. Then, like he’s waking up from a dream, James shakes himself and heads down the hall towards the lab, tucking his arm back out of sight while he walks.

“I’ve never seen him do that before,” Steve murmurs.

Natasha nods in agreement. Normally, James treats his arm like he doesn’t quite trust it. She’s never seen him simply stop and admire it — if that’s what he was actually doing. He might have been checking it for malfunctions, though Nat doubts it. There are only a few things — and some of them are on her body — that he’s touched with that much reverence and awe.

“Wish I knew what he was saying,” Natasha says.

“Me too,” James says from behind her, making all of them jump. Nat turns, and he smiles apologetically. All the blood’s been cleared away from his face. “I don’t remember doing that,” he explains, gesturing at the screen. “Or how I knew that I’d find you here. I just knew this was the place to go.”

“So you don’t know where you were before?” Scott asks, and James shakes his head.

“Fascinating,” says Scott, and before anyone can interject, he’s off on a tangent about his trip to the micro-verse and how it’s a big blank spot in his memory.

While he talks, James sidles up a little closer to Natasha. “What do you think of my sweater?” he asks with a warm, teasing grin.

Nat knows what he’s doing. She recently convinced him that it was okay to donate old, beat-up clothes, that the world wouldn’t end if he threw out a pair of socks instead of darning them.

“It’s a little ratty,” she tells him, and his smile widens. “But it looks comfy.”

“It is,” he agrees. He looks down at it, then his gaze travels lower, taking in her curves before sliding back up to her eyes. Nat’s heart skips a beat the way it always does when he looks at her like that.

“I think it’d look even better on our bedroom floor,” he adds in Russian, the syllables low and filthy-sounding.

A slow smile is taking over her face, she knows, as she feels the first tug of arousal start low in her gut. “Prove it,” she counters.

He winks, and before she knows it, he’s made their excuses and hustled them off to their bedroom.

The sweater really does look better there.

* * *

“Feels like I haven’t seen you in days,” he says later, when they’re naked on top of sweaty sheets.

“Since you went after the aliens with Steve,” she says, and James shakes his head, stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray that she keeps for him on the nightstand.

“Longer,” he says, exhaling a cloud of smoke that dissipates quickly with the fresh breeze coming in through the patio door. “Long enough to miss you.”

“I missed you, too,” she replies. “At least, from what I can remember, I missed you.”

“Thanks, doll,” James says dryly. He kisses her on the nose before settling with his head on her breasts. “I just want to stay here forever, is that okay?”

“Here on my tits?” Nat teases him.

He laughs a little, softly, but his voice, when he speaks, is serious. “No. I mean, yes, of course, your tits are amazing—”

“I know,” says Natasha.

“But what I mean is, I want to stay with you forever. Make new memories to replace the ones I lost.” He kisses her skin. “What do you say?”

“I say sure,” says Natasha, and he raises his head to kiss her lips before settling back against her chest.

Natasha strokes his hair in silence — its softness always surprises her — and soaks in the tenderness of the moment, the rare quiet joy she’s feeling, like a warm coal in her chest that flares up when the wind changes, when James is near her.

 _Hopeless romantic,_ she thinks, and she honestly isn’t sure which of them she’s thinking of. Both, probably, though it’s a secret they hide pretty well.

“You get me,” James goes on like he reads her mind. “You always have. And I knew that, I did, but I thought — well. If I’m honest, I thought you’d figure out that I don’t deserve you and take off.”

“James,” she chastises.

“I know,” he says quietly. “Not exactly a healthy disposition, but it’s true.”

Natasha hums. “So what changed?”

“I don’t know,” James answers after a long moment, his words blurry with fatigue. “I guess the last twelve hours taught me a thing or two. Wish I could remember what.”

Natasha doesn’t know how to reply to that, but it doesn’t seem to matter, since a few minutes later, James’s breathing changes. He’s fallen asleep, leaving Nat to watch over him.

Lying there with her fingers still in his hair, she can’t help but be reminded of the days immediately following James’s return from Wakanda. He was twitchy and uncertain around her; later she found out that his memories of her had returned — all of them. But the more Nat showed him she was no threat, the lower his guard got until one day, quite suddenly, he fell asleep on her couch. He slept just like this, his face peaceful and young, smooth of its permanent wary lines.

She can move around now — in those early days, the slightest noise or movement would wake him — and she’s not terribly sleepy, so she gets up, gathers their laundry, and starts a load in the washer. As she’s dumping the clothes into the machine, she notices that the tag on James’s new ratty hoodie has something written on it.

 _S. Stan,_ it reads in fine black permanent marker. Nat frowns, thinking. The name means nothing to her, but she grabs the scissors and cuts it off, just in case. When James awakens, she’ll ask him if he knows it, if he knows why it seems vaguely familiar.


	7. Epilogue: Sebastian

“Baby,” Anthony laughs, as he comes fully into Seb’s room and shuts the door. “What have you got yourself into this time?”

He keeps his hand on the doorknob, his luggage is already in the car — he’s ready to go. Seb knows this, knows that he’s holding Anthony up, but he can’t leave yet, he just can’t.

“You sure you haven’t seen it?” he asks, as he tries to pull the dresser out from the wall.

“As I told you when you texted me eighteen times,” says Anthony, “yes, I’m sure I haven’t seen it. Now get out from behind there, you’re gonna get hurt.”

“Well, I just thought maybe it fell,” Seb explains, but he trails off as he catches sight of a silver glint against the hardwood floor. It’s not his hoodie, but—

“What the hell is that?” Anthony exclaims.

“It’s a knife,” says Sebastian.

“Obviously it’s a knife,” Anthony says, rolling his eyes. “What are you doing with it?”

“I don’t know,” Seb says slowly.

“Well, put it back,” Anthony instructs. “Probably some goddamn murder weapon,” he mutters. “It’s gonna get pinned on you now, and I’m here, so they’ll probably nail me as an accomplice or some sideways bullshit—”

Sebastian stops listening. He turns the knife over in his hand, testing its weight. It’s a lot like the ones they have on set, the ones that fit perfectly into the sheaths of his Winter Soldier pants, except that this one is definitely not a prop. He runs his thumb over the edge, holds it up to the light — it’s sharper than anything he’s ever trained with, that’s for sure.

And there, on the base of the handle, something is carved. _JBB,_ by the looks of it.

“Weird,” Seb murmurs, and before he can think too hard about it, he’s opened his suitcase and tucked the weapon safely inside.

“Are you insane?” Anthony demands. He’s come away from the door now, and is glaring at Sebastian from the foot of the bed.

“It’ll be fine,” Seb tries to reassure Anthony, but Anthony is shaking his head, his mouth compact with anger.

“You’re bad news,” he tells Sebastian firmly.

Seb can’t help it. He smirks, pulls his bottom lip through his teeth, knowing it drives Anthony crazy, and he can see Anthony cracking. _Won’t be long now,_ he thinks. Sure enough, a second later, Anthony’s face is softening into Seb’s favorite expression of fond exasperation.

“I hate you,” Anthony says, and they both laugh because they know where the line comes from, and they know it’s about as true for them as it is for their characters. “Come on,” Anthony adds. “Let’s go.”

Sebastian grabs his suitcase, but he hesitates. “My lucky hoodie,” he says once more, like the words will conjure it up out of nowhere. “I can’t just leave without—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, baby, I’ll buy you a new one,” Anthony promises. He takes Seb’s hand and tugs him towards the door. “Besides,” he goes on in a lower voice just before they open it, “we both know you won’t need that thing to get lucky tonight.”

Sebastian feels his cheeks burning, and he can’t help the tiny smile that bubbles up as they head down the hall side by side, Anthony chatting merrily with the bellhop about his wife and kids. And, as they step out into the cool evening air, Sebastian thinks maybe he can let the hoodie go after all.

He’s got enough luck to last him for now.


	8. Epilogue: Sam

“The bed feels bigger tonight,” says Sam, turning down the sheets so Steve can get in beside him. “But I don’t know why.”

“I know what you mean,” Steve agrees. He reaches over, turns out the light, and shifts closer to Sam in the darkness. “I keep thinking there’s too much space in here, which makes no sense.”

“Maybe we should get a dog,” Sam suggests.

Steve chuckles. “Guess we’ll have to,” he agrees, kissing Sam’s neck.

A shiver runs through Sam at the contact — his neck is definitely a turn-on zone — but that’s about it. His cock doesn’t stir, and even though there’s a hopeful twitch in the pit of his stomach, he feels too tired to pursue anything further.

But as he lies there in the dark, following the frayed threads of memory that he has from the last twenty-four hours, his brain starts spinning, running over the blank spots in his memory. He knows he won’t be sleeping any time soon.

Steve shifts suddenly beside him. “Did we make love last night?” he asks.

Sam smiles — it’s sweet, the way Steve always says it like that — and draws in a breath, running a quick internal scan. His body is tired, loose in a familiar way, but more than that, there’s a trace of something in his memory, or maybe it’s just fantasy: sweat on the pillow and Steve hot behind him.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “But I think maybe we did.”

“Feels like we did,” Steve agrees. “I’d feel better if I could remember, though.”

“Same.” Sam sighs. The amnesia is troubling — it feels almost like he’s missing an old friend, a presence that should be at his side.

“Maybe we’ll just have to make some new memories,” Steve adds a moment later.

Sam grins, rolls over and wraps Steve up in his arms. “Sounds like a plan, baby,” he says, but he’s yawning.

“Tomorrow,” Steve decides, after he yawns as well.

Sam nods, closes his eyes and breathes in the familiar scent of Steve’s hair. “Tomorrow.”


End file.
